What if octopuses really are alien?

What if octopuses really are alien?

OCTOPUSES are weird. This is not just because they look odd. It's not because they're disturbingly smart. It's because they have a strange power.

The ability to edit their own bodies.

This has biologists scratching their heads.

Evolution doesn't work that way. It's supposed to be spurred by genetic mutations - a change in DNA - that proves to be beneficial to the host.

So how could a creature evolve in such a way as to allow them to rebuild themselves?

Now a new train of thought has emerged.

They didn't.

At least, not here.

Instead - it's an advanced biological ability that came from outer space.

An ethereal octopus emerges from the depths. Picture: Istock

THE KRAKEN WAKES

In April last year, researchers found octopuses - and some of their cuttlefish and squid cousins - regularly edit their RNA.

This sets them apart from the rest of the animal world.

RNA, like DNA, records genetic code. But where DNA is a double-stranded molecule, RNA consists of just one strand. Its role within our body is to transmit genetic information to trigger the production of proteins.

But some scientists feel RNA may have been the original DNA, acting as the permanent storehouse of genetic code among Earth's earliest organisms.

When it comes to cephalopods like the common squid, researchers have found that up to 60 per cent of the RNA in its nervous system had been edited after it was programmed by DNA. These changes adapted its brain to shifting temperatures in it ocean habitat.

Last year, it was discovered two species of octopus and one of cuttlefish does the same thing - routinely.

Instead, it builds up the idea that our biochemistry has been contaminated by influences from beyond our own planet.

The authors argue that a cloud of organic material likely rained down upon the Earth about 500 million years ago. And that changed everything.

Could the code of life be carried across the cosmos in space dust? One group of researchers believes so. Picture: Hubble

ALIEN IMPACT

The Cambrian Explosion is certainly mysterious. It was a period of time where life on Earth diversified dramatically, and rapidly.

It's an event which took place shortly after the emergence of retroviruses in our environment.

It was especially dramatic for a type of mollusc called a cephalopod. Tentacles reached out from their shells and wove their way into enormous variety of creatures which eventually became the octopus, cuttlefish and squid we know today.

"We believe this coincidence is not fortuitous but is consistent with a key prediction ... whereby major extinction-diversification evolutionary boundaries coincide with virus-bearing cometary-bolide bombardment events," the study's abstract reads.

This idea is that space-borne retroviruses eventually found their way to the Earth's surface before attaching themselves to living organisms. Once there, they reprogrammed the creatures' evolution.

"A second focus is the remarkable evolution of intelligent complexity (Cephalopods) culminating in the emergence of the Octopus," the study reads.

"A third focus concerns the microorganism fossil evidence contained within meteorites as well as the detection in the upper atmosphere of apparent incoming life-bearing particles from space."

The paper argues the space-based transfer of life was likely on a larger scale than just retroviruses. Whole sets of frozen genetic material were cast about on the stellar winds before splashing down in our oceans.

Here, they thawed.

"Thus the possibility that cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted," the study reads.

Therefore, octopuses are aliens.

It's interesting conjecture. It's an idea that fits the circumstances. But concrete evidence is yet to be produced. The idea is yet to be tested.

But it's tantalising.

"Life may have been seeded here on Earth by life-bearing comets as soon as conditions on Earth allowed it to flourish (about or just before 4.1 Billion years ago); and living organisms such as space-resistant and space-hardy bacteria, viruses, more complex eukaryotic cells, fertilised ova and seeds have been continuously delivered ever since to Earth so being one important driver of further terrestrial evolution which has resulted in considerable genetic diversity and which has led to the emergence of mankind."